If you pursue a doctor's degree in law, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #1 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Law Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,835 doctor's degrees in law during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their doctor's degree from the school. After all, your doctor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to law students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of law students who choose to seek a doctor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for law to pay back their student loans after receiving their doctor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized law related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for law students working on their doctor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Law Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Arizona State University - Tempe is a great decision for individuals interested in a doctor's degree in law. Located in the medium-sized city of Tempe, ASU - Tempe is a public university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduation, law doctorate recipients usually earn about $72,119 in the first five years of their career.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
